I’ve been meaning to do a comparison of a few of the metallic paints and here they are.
1. Mr Paint chrome
2. Alclad chrome
3. Tamiya chrome silver
4. Mission Model chrome
Mr Paint is a paint manufacturer from Slovakia, well known for their aircraft metallics but they also have other paints for armor (I will do a separate post for those). The rest of the I think are fairly well known. I put down a base coat of Alclad gloss black primer on all 4 test pieces and let it sit for 24 hours before applying the metallic coat.
The Mr Paint chrome seemed a little dark compared to the others, so much so that I had to double check the bottle after I applied it. Beautiful finish but if you were looking to use this as a base for a candy apple finish, this wouldn’t be the paint I recommend. Straight out of the bottle into the airbrush (Iwata Eclipse 0.35mm) and sprayed great, no surprise for a lacquer based paint. A little smelly which is to be expected as well. Very durable finish and had no issues with the Tamiya, masking, or Frog tape (medium adhesion) tests.
Alclad chrome sprayed beautifully - again to be expected with a lacquer based paint and the finish was great. It also had no issues with the tape tests with all three tapes. For Gundam, this had become my go to paint for the metallic pieces.
The Tamiya chrome silver had to be thinned and I used Tamiya lacquer thinner roughly 50-50. The result was a little grainy, not unusable but not as good as the others. It also had difficulty with the Frog tape - there was heavy pickup as you can see from the photo. It had no issues with the other two tapes. I’m a big Tamiya fan, and for the non-metallic paints, it’s usually the first one I reach for.
Finally the Mission Model chrome. Unlike their non-metallic paints, this could be sprayed out of the bottle with no thinning. Sprayed great, and had a nice finish that was just a hair less glassy than the lacquers, but definitely a good paint particularly if you’re not able to spray the lacquers because of your surroundings. Excellent durability and had no issues with any of the tapes.
In summary, I would have no problem using Mr Paint, Alclad or Mission Model metallics on my armor or Gundam builds and in the case of not being able to spray the lacquers, the MM paint is an excellent choice.
It should be noted that for the tape test, I would rub the tape into the painted surface pretty hard before peeling off. The Frog tape was at least twice as tacky as the other two.
